We performed a comparison between IBM PowerVM and KVM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Server Virtualization Software solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."The most valuable features in this solution are you do not get degradation in the performance like you could get in other solutions. There is a physical adapter that is better than a virtual one and you can assign adapters to a VM."
"The feature that I like most is the versatility."
"The tool's performance is top-notch."
"Managing other operating systems is also straightforward with IBM PowerVM."
"It's in English, so its exceptional qualities make the control environment more flexible, easier, more stable, and easy to recover after issues."
"Active Memory Sharing dynamically reallocates memory of running partitions based on changing workload demands. The memory for the pool is carved out from Physical memory and is made logical memory. The said memory is not available to be assigned to partitions as dedicated memory. A min, max and desired as well as weight is assigned to the memory of each lpar to help hypervisor make a decision in case a condition where priority is to be given to a certain lapr to use the memory form shared pool."
"It's scalable. Whenever we buy another product other than hardware, it's easily integrated into the virtualization software that we download."
"The stability is the most valuable aspect of this solution. IBM is the most powerful and stable platform."
"This solution is open source and easy to configure."
"I think nine out of the ten supercomputers in the world use Linux KVM, so I think that attests to the fact that it is a scalable product."
"Very cost-effective."
"I find the density of the product most valuable. It is density that a technologist can just assign page merging. This is what makes KVM one of the important players of the virtualization market."
"KVM has a rich options set which can be directly used or via wrappers, such as libvirt."
"The performance is great."
"If you prefer command-line, there are all kinds of command-line options."
"The KVM service is well managed with a central policy interface."
"This solution is lacking the ability to have servers act as a cluster, such as in VMware. IBM has come out with a feature similar to VMware's vCenter but it is not as mature. They need to add LPM shared-nothing feature, such as in vMotion."
"To make it a ten, I would like for them to add automation and configuration tools in order to help use the manager."
"The hardware licensing model could be improved because the licensing model is a bit different from the standard hardware procured."
"SRM for site recovery is a feature that should be included."
"The cost of this solution is high."
"IBM PowerVM does not integrate with Microsoft."
"The interface is not user-friendly in places, so it could use some improvement."
"Any improvements that can be made in the interface will go a long way to helping us work better."
"The grid interface of KVM needs improvement. It could be more beautiful, especially when compared to VMware."
"Monitoring and resolution could be improved."
"Business continuity features need to be added."
"One thing that maybe could be improved is making it easier to scale. It needs to be more clear on how to scale the storage space for virtual machines."
"Technical support could be better. In the next release, I would like to see an improved user interface and dashboard. This type of improvement will make it easy or help our engineers understand the solution from a requirement point of view."
"We still occasionally build Interlaced Wireless Protection within our environment. The ecosystem entails areas, where we support agents, and release backup and security solutions. Collaboration with independent software vendors (ITOLs or ITOLED) is necessary to offer these solutions to customers. However, the scope of the ecosystem in KVM is not as extensive as that of VMware's. In contrast, VMware boasts a robust partner network, allowing for comprehensive customer solutions. On the other hand, KVM’s ecosystem is comparatively limited in comparison. I would like to see FT features in KVM."
"The virtual manager and the graphical QEMU for KVM need some improvement."
"Its resource usage can be improved."
IBM PowerVM is ranked 9th in Server Virtualization Software with 25 reviews while KVM is ranked 4th in Server Virtualization Software with 39 reviews. IBM PowerVM is rated 8.4, while KVM is rated 8.0. The top reviewer of IBM PowerVM writes "A stable system for high-end data processing with a great support structure". On the other hand, the top reviewer of KVM writes "Delivers good performance because of kernel-based virtualization". IBM PowerVM is most compared with VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI), Oracle VM VirtualBox and Proxmox VE, whereas KVM is most compared with Proxmox VE, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Hyper-V, VMware vSphere and Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure (NCI). See our IBM PowerVM vs. KVM report.
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